ICE detention centers face deadly overcrowding as deaths mount and human rights advocates warn of systemic medical neglect under Trump’s mass deportation push.
In the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s return to office, seven people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), three of them in April alone. The deaths come amid a massive surge in immigration arrests and an expanding network of immigration jails that advocates and lawmakers say are dangerously overcrowded, medically negligent, and largely shielded from public scrutiny.
The most recent known victim was Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old Haitian woman who died on April 25 at the Broward Transitional Center in Florida. Blaise had been in ICE custody since February, detained initially in the U.S. Virgin Islands before being transferred between multiple immigration jails in Puerto Rico, Louisiana, and Florida. On the day of her death, Blaise reportedly complained of chest pain for hours before being given pills and told to lie down. She died later that evening.
“Marie had been complaining about chest pain for hours,” said Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian-American member of Congress. “They gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. Unfortunately, Marie never woke up. Her loved ones deserve answers. They deserve accountability.”
ICE has issued nearly identical statements in response to recent deaths, including those of Brayan Garzón-Rayo, a 27-year-old Colombian man who died on April 8 in Missouri, and Nhon Nguc Nguyen, a 55-year-old Vietnamese man who died on April 16 in Texas. In all cases, the agency stated: “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”
But multiple investigations and civil rights complaints suggest otherwise. According to Detention Watch Network, there are now nearly 50,000 people in ICE detention, a 21 percent increase since mid-December. “Trump’s cruel, multi-layered detention expansion plan is exacerbating the detention system that is proven to be inherently inhumane,” said Carly Pérez Fernández, the group’s communications director. “No one should suffer in these conditions.”
The Biden-era Laiken Riley Act, signed into law in 2024, has dramatically widened the scope of who must be detained, requiring ICE to hold undocumented individuals arrested for even minor offenses such as shoplifting or DUIs. Katie Blankenship of Sanctuary of the South, who advocates for detainees at Florida’s Krome North Service Processing Center, described the result as a collapse of the parole system: “Parole is over.”
Conditions at Krome have drawn particular scrutiny. Following the release of a viral video and reports of overcrowding, Rep. Frederica Wilson visited the site, describing it as a “tent city.” ICE later confirmed the construction of a massive tent outside the facility to house additional detainees, claiming it would include air conditioning and meet federal standards. Blankenship was skeptical: “They are putting lipstick on a pig to get the press off their back and the [members of Congress] off their back.”
One of the most chilling deaths occurred earlier this year. Maksym Chernyak, a 44-year-old Ukrainian man who had entered the U.S. legally under a humanitarian parole program, died on February 20 after suffering multiple seizures while awaiting hospital transfer from Krome. According to ICE’s own report, Chernyak was found “intoxicated, diaphoretic, uncoordinated, and intermittently unresponsive,” and suffered six seizures in rapid succession before he was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic stroke and declared brain dead.
In response to mounting complaints, the Trump administration recently shut down three oversight offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for investigating civil rights violations in detention. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
Meanwhile, human rights groups filed a lawsuit on April 24 challenging the closure of these offices, which were created by Congress to monitor abuse in immigration detention. California Attorney General Rob Bonta also issued a warning after releasing a review of the state’s federal immigration prisons: “California’s facility reviews remain especially critical in light of efforts by the Trump Administration to both eliminate oversight of conditions at immigration detention facilities and increase its inhumane campaign of mass immigration enforcement.”
At Washington’s Northwest Detention Center, run by the private GEO Group, conditions have sparked six hunger strikes in the past four months. According to Rufina Reyes of the immigrant rights group La Resistencia, detainees have reported medical neglect, poor sanitation, solitary confinement, and denial of access to legal services. “We also know there are more people being deported each week and more people arriving each week,” Reyes said.
New data from the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington shows that between 2014 and 2024, only two out of 157 reports of abuse or assault filed by detained immigrants in Tacoma were prosecuted — and both involved jail staff as victims. “Because a lot of people are scared, they have stopped working,” Reyes said of the growing fear in immigrant communities. “We know about one family… that hasn’t left their house because they have a lot of fear.”
Asked how policymakers should respond, Reyes was unequivocal: “More than anything, we ask politicians to visit the detention centers and also to call for the detention centers to be shut down.”
COMMENTS